Alice Miller Quotes About Children

Quotes about: Children

• The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Writing, Child Abuse

  Alice Miller (1998). “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child”, p.235, Macmillan

• Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Umpires, Parent

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.263, Macmillan

• The art of not experiencing feelings. A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Art, Children

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.9, Basic Books

• Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.

  Alice Miller

  Children, People, Expectations

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.87, Basic Books

• All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection

  Alice Miller

  Children, Self, Feelings

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.130, Basic Books

• In the short term, corporal punishment may produce obedience. But it is a fact documented by research that in the long term the results are inability to learn, violence and rage, bullying, cruelty, inability to feel another's pain, especially that of one's own children, even drug addiction and suicide, unless there are enlightened or at least helping witnesses on hand to prevent that development.

  Alice Miller

  Suicide, Bullying, Children

• Child abuse is still sanctioned — indeed, held in high regard — in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Order, Long

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.130, Basic Books

• We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Growing Up, Learning

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.177, Macmillan

• The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Character, Parent

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.105, Macmillan

• Child abuse damages a person for life and that damage is in no way diminished by the ignorance of the perpetrator. It is only with the uncovering of the complete truth as it affects all those involved that a genuinely viable solution can be found to the dangers of child abuse.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Ignorance, Abuse

  Alice Miller (2012). “Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries”, p.165, Anchor

• someday we will regard our children not as creatures to manipulate or to change but rather as messengers from a world we once deeply knew, but which we have long since forgotten, who can reveal to us more about the true secrets of life, and also our own lives, than our parents were ever able to.

  Alice Miller

  Life, Change, Children

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.18, Macmillan

• The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Confused, Childhood

• Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.

  Alice Miller

  Education, Children, Learning

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.101, Macmillan

• People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be-both in their youth and in adulthood-intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience.

  Alice Miller

  Hurt, Children, Honesty

  "The Roots of Violence" by Alice Miller, www.alice-miller.com. 2015.

• The achievement of freedom is hardly possible without the felt mourning. This ability to mourn, i.e, to give up the illusion of a happy childhood, can restore vitality and creativity if a person is able to experience that he was never loved as a child for what he was, but for his achievements, success and good qualities. And that he sacrificed his childhood for this love, this will shake him very deeply.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Giving Up, Self Esteem

• If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others.

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Needs

  Alice Miller (1981). “Prisoners of Childhood”, New York : Basic Books

• The attempt to be an ideal parent, that is, to behave correctly toward the child, to raise her correctly, not to give to little ortoo much, is in essence an attempt to be the ideal child--well behaved and dutiful--of one's own parents. But as a result of these efforts the needs of the child go unnoticed. I cannot listen to my child with empathy if I am inwardly preoccupied with being a good mother; I cannot be open to what she is telling me.

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Essence

• Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Giving, Soul

  "Forgiving Others and Trusting God . . . a Handbook for Survivors of Child". Book by J. E. Norris-Bernal, p. 16, 2011.

• It is precisely because a child's feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.

  Alice Miller

  Strong, Children, Wall

  Alice Miller (2008). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition”, p.33, Hachette UK

• The child has a primary need to be regarded and respected as the person he really is at any given time, and as the center - the central actor - in his own activity.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Needs, Actors

  Alice Miller (1981). “Prisoners of Childhood”, New York : Basic Books

• Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Long, Childhood

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.265, Macmillan

• We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters; otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Mean, Long

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.177, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

• The abused children are alone with their suffering, not only within the family, but also within themselves. They cannot crate a place in their own soul where they could cry their beart out.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Self Esteem, Soul

• Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great- grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Responsibility, Reality

  Alice Miller (2012). “The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness”, p.169, Anchor

• Every child has a legitimate narcissistic need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and respected by his mother. In the first weeks and months of life he needs to have the mother at his disposal, must be able to use her and to be mirrored by her.

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Taken

  Alice Miller (1981). “Prisoners of Childhood”, New York : Basic Books

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